CATANIA -- The smuggler transporting migrants from Libya last year before the ship sank, causing the deaths of over 700 migrants, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison, judicial sources said Tuesday.

 The Preliminary Hearings Judge from Catania Daniela Monaco Crea has sentenced the captain of the smuggling operation during which a huge shipwreck caused the deaths of 700 migrants April 18, 2015, to 18 years in prison.

 The captain, Mohamed Ali Malek is Tunisian, aged 27, and his ‘ship’s boy’ Mahmud Bikhit, sentenced to five years, is a 25-year-old from Syria. Both of them survived the shipwreck, along with only 28 other people.

 Both were indicted for facilitating clandestine immigration, but the captain was retained as guilty also for mass manslaughter and shipwrecking. The indicted have consistently proclaimed themselves innocent, claiming that they were simply ‘passengers’ along with the other migrants.

 Catania’s Public Prosecutor’s Office had asked for Malik’s sentence to be of 18 years and Bikhit’s of six, as well as a reparation payment of 3 million euros. The ‘ship’s boy’ also accused Malek of being the ‘commander.’ He also said he saw the other members of the crew but could not identify them amongst the survivors.

 According to the prosecution, the shipwreck was “determined by a series of causes, amongst which the overcrowding of the boat and the erratic manoeuvres by the ‘captain’ Malek, which led the fishing boat to collide with the merchant vessel King Jacob,” that had come to rescue the migrants.

 nkd